


the scream

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Starshine Over Beach City: Moments from Steven Universe [16]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Volleyball, pink steven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21932287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Steven and Mega Pearl leave the Reef.  Steven learns that he must be cautious.
Series: Starshine Over Beach City: Moments from Steven Universe [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1523993
Comments: 9
Kudos: 208





	the scream

He pants, sweat rolling down his face, his legs threatening to buckle. The Pearl fusion gazes back at him through the long hall of the Reef, and he manages a tremulous smile, a flimsy stretch of cheeks and lips he doesn’t even feel. **  
**

Steven gives in, sinking to his knees as the fusion gets to her feet. She’s elegant, a glorious giant woman his younger self would have been awed by.

 _Don’t look back_ , he wills the fusion, _don’t look at it, don’t look at what I did –_

She takes one smooth, balanced step, then another, moving away from the room with the shattered floor. _Shatter – no, no –_ the room with the _cracked_ floor, no, that’s hardly better –

Steven shivers, trying to catch his breath. His body remembers far more difficult things he’s asked of it, surviving space, the heat of battle, a few agonized steps in a white, white room; so why, then, does he feel so weak now? He flinches against a wave of nausea.

She’s closer now, an ethereal smile on her face. Her single eye regards him kindly. The crack spreading across her left cheek does not look so jarring, this way.

He scrambles to his feet, scrubbing the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. _They’re both okay,_ he tells himself, and the thought skitters around his head, worms between images that flash and spark. Pearl with her hand flung out in front of Volleyball. Volleyball cowering, small and scared. His face, a snarl of rage – his face, _pink, like **hers**_ – 

What has he done? What did he almost do?

He winces. The Pearl fusion – _Mega Pearl_ , his brain blearily supplies – bends to brush his hair back from his eyes. “Are you all right?” she asks, her voice richer, more musical somehow than Pearl’s alone. She’s magnificent, assured, confident, wise in a way he thinks he’ll never be, and he wishes he could have met her anywhere else than here.

“I’m fine,” he manages – it’s not really a lie, he isn’t _hurt_ – and he pulls away from her touch, turning his back. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes,” she murmurs. “This place has nothing for us.”

_Especially since I just **broke** it._

He shoves his hands in his jacket pockets, hurrying back to the warp, his footsteps ringing on the smooth floor even in flip-flops. A doppelganger haunts him with every step, a pale teenager with wide eyes and a clenched-shut mouth, staring up at him out of the coruscating glass. He rips his gaze from the floor and walks faster, pulling ahead of the fusion. His heart is a thumping, squirming thing frantic in his chest.

He barely sets foot on the warp pad before it shimmers around him, light folding and stretching infinite around him. _Home, home, home_ , he begs. He staggers off the temple warp pad, legs still shaky beneath him, frantically looking around. The lights are off and Amethyst and Garnet are nowhere in sight.

He doesn’t want to be inside right now. Inside’s full of memories, echoes of old lies, the empty space on the wall where her painting used to hang, delicate human things that can break so easily. He remembers the throb of power in his throat, remembers how _good_ it felt to roar, remembers how he _liked_ it.

He runs outside, the screen door closing jerkily behind him. He leaps over the railing, settling down easily on the sand in the temple’s shadow, and he crumples as soon as his feet hit the ground.

Hands dig into the sand, fingers tearing, clawing against damp heavy silica. He’s breathing too hard, chest a broken bellows, but if he gets too quiet he’ll feel the stinging in his eyes, and if he gets too loud, he’ll scream the town down –

Cold water on his hands, startling him. The tide lapping in, whispering out. He crawls backwards away from the water’s encroachment and sits cautiously, sand still clinging to his fingers, gritty beneath his short-chewed nails. 

His breathing slows. _Take a moment…._

He just won’t do it again. That’s all. Simple. Done.

His hands sink down to his sides. One of them brushes against a stick. He grips it harder than is necessary. He starts using it to practice clumsy Gemglyph in the sand, writing the characters one on top of each other until there’s just a half-dug hole in front of him, a messy void.

Footsteps behind him. They could only belong to a dancer, graceful and light. He looks up at her, ashamed. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says quietly. But he can’t say why. The words won’t come. Instead, “The whole trip was for nothing.” 

_It wasn’t supposed to be about you. It was supposed to be for her. You were supposed to **help** her, remember?_

She’s too gentle with him. Tells him she finally understands the truth about Pink, about Rose, about how she changed. She separates, Pearl and Volleyball hand in hand. He’s grateful that this, at least, he didn’t ruin.

The stick breaks in his hand, splinters sticking in his palm. The two Pearls do not notice, talking quietly to each other in the moonlight. 

Steven slowly stands, takes one step away from them, then another. He tries to tell himself he’s being considerate, letting them talk to each other. Tries to tell himself he isn’t running away.

Pearl angles her head toward him, their eyes meeting. She looks thoughtful. Calm. Still thinking about _her_ , then. Because if she was thinking about him, he’d expect to see _fear_ –

He backs away before calm can become concern. She knows, right? She knows he didn’t mean to? 

He’s sure of it. 

Isn’t he?

He slips through the darkness back to the empty house, so full of delicate things. He’s careful up the stairs. Careful changing. Careful into bed. 

He dreams of the Reef destroyed. He dreams of an endless mirror repeating, his pink hands clasped over his mouth, the scream swallowed, suppressed, stuffed down, down, down. 

Steven wakes up, his face buried in his pillow, his hand over his mouth.

_It won’t happen again._

**Author's Note:**

> DAMMIT PEARL TALK TO HIM but since that apparently didn't happen, let's do this instead. REPRESSION TIME


End file.
